Curiosity and the Cat
by Caliban76
Summary: A young woman discovers the Matrix in an unconventional way.
1. Chapter 1, Exposition

            Meira Rani slouched low in the driver's seat of the nondescript sedan and peered intently at the boxy, expensive-looking sport utility vehicle that pulled in from the quiet street. She checked her watch, and noted with some consternation that her hunch had been accurate -- these terrorists or criminals or whoever they were would meet here, at this particular warehouse, at midnight on this particular night. If there was any good reason why she seemed to guess correctly what the criminals were doing, she couldn't say what it was. She only knew that she would be going about her day one moment, and then, just as if someone flipped on a switch in her head, she would know that a certain group of criminals would be up to no good in a very specific location of the city. Occasionally, she would also know that the police or other government agents were on their way to stop them -- she would know it with the same certainty that she knew her name.

            Gravel popped beneath the tires as the vehicle glided to a halt in a pool of harsh yellow light cast by a sodium lamp. The vehicle's four doors opened up simultaneously, and four figures emerged, as if in a choreographed dance. The driver and passenger, both male, wore bulky parkas emblazoned with sports team logos, absurdly loose jeans, ball caps, and expensive looking sunglasses. Despite their attempt at looking like young ruffians, their demeanor and bearing gave them away as alert professionals. Their large coats could easily conceal all manner of weapons, and very likely covered armored vests as well. The two men pivoted smoothly and took up positions on either side of the warehouse door marked "OFFICE," just outside of the sodium lamp's glare. 

            One of the rear passengers, a burly fellow in a fashionable buff-colored suede jacket, tight blue jeans, cowboy boots, and trendy translucent sunglasses said something into a cell phone, and exchanged a look with the other rear passenger. The latter, wearing combat boots, low-slung urban pattern camouflage trousers, and a black turtleneck, nodded slung a slim leather pouch over her shoulder and across her body. The two fell into step as they walked towards the door. Meira couldn't quite see what transpired at the office door, but after a moment, the two disappeared inside. 

            She marveled at how professional and diverse the criminals were, these four and all the ones before. There was no doubt that these people all had some common goal, but she couldn't say exactly what it was. That they had the resources for so many people from so many backgrounds and so much equipment was readily apparent. Even before this last year of observing the criminals, she knew it wasn't the ordinary gang who would be able to come up with some of the gear she'd seen -- guns, cars, explosives, helicopters, and even machine guns of a variety she was sure only the military were allowed to have. Some of them had performed physical feats she thought highly improbable, even from world-class athletes. And somehow they were able to employ members from a broad range of racial, ethnic, and social backgrounds. Yet, for all the fuss and commotion they seemed to stir up, very little of substance would appear in the news. 

            As intriguing as the criminals were, Meira's true focus was elsewhere. She followed the criminals because it was then that she would see the Suits. She was not usually one to chase after nonsense and dreams, but after an inexplicable hallucination during that bizarre riot one summer day a year ago and a broken leg the doctors said came from being hit by a car, she had been haunted by the men in brown suits. They belonged to some government agency, she knew, but she could not tell which one, not even after a year of watching them. Not that she would ever walk up to one and ask -- ever since her accident, she always seemed to know when they were around, and she knew they were likely the most dangerous men on the planet. She often questioned her sanity, thought perhaps something got knocked loose in her head when the car hit her. Meira noted with dismay that recently, not only had her uncanny awareness of the Suits become more acute, but she thought she could hear snatches of conversation between them, even if she couldn't see them or be within earshot. It was insane to think she could actually hear them -- they rarely spoke aloud, and seemed to receive their instructions solely by way of the earpieces they wore.

            As if thinking about it was enough to summon them, a brief flurry of thought swept through her consciousness, too quiet to be called sound, but authoritative nonetheless: _target location acquired; transmitting coordinates; be advised: anomaly in vicinity; advance, observe, and report; acknowledge._ A burst of thought followed, which Meira could not have articulated in words but knew with a grim certainty the thought-burst signified the warehouse she watched. Equally whisper quiet and alien to her mind was a reply, a different tone: _acknowledged._ Fear swelled in her chest -- she knew what would happen next.


	2. Chapter 2, Recognition

            Meira could feel rather than hear the Suits' sedan approaching the warehouse; they were less than a minute away. There were three of them, which she knew from previous encounters was more than enough to capture, kill, or disperse any four of the criminals, amazingly athletic and brave though they might be. There must be quite a few more of the criminals inside. She reflected grimly that given the choice between _capture, kill,_ and _disperse, _the Suits tended to choose the second option. At first, that shocked her, since she had always thought government agents would rather catch criminals than kill them. The criminals seemed to know the Suits' preference for lethal force, and very few ever chose to stand and fight them. Meira couldn't recall any terrorists standing their ground and living to tell the tale.

            Thirty seconds after perceiving the brief conversation between the Suits and whoever gave them their orders (whom she had taken to referring to as the Dispatcher) Meira could see one of the two parka-clad guards take his hands from his pockets, reach inside one sleeve, and pull out a cell phone. She wouldn't have caught the motion at all had the parka not been somewhat reflective and the phone lit up in stark relief to the inky darkness beyond the sodium lamp's glare. Meira heard a harsh curse, muffled by distance and closed car windows, and watched the two hustle for the SUV and climb in the back seats. Light spilled out from the open doors, and the vehicle rocked back and forth on its suspension. 

            Gravel popped and cracked behind her as a car pulled into the warehouse parking lot. She didn't need to look over her shoulder to know the Suits had arrived, but she did anyway. The nondescript beige boat-like car wouldn't have looked out of place in a cop movie from twenty years ago. The car ground to a halt and two impossibly bright beams of light stabbed out at the SUV, illuminating it utterly and painting a stark black shadow on the warehouse wall behind.

            Meira squinted against the glare of the vehicle's glossy reflection, but was still able to perceive movement on the roof near the cargo compartment. A heavy _thump, _and a rectangular segment of the roof clattered over the side of the vehicle. At the same time, three doors in the sedan opened as one, and the Suits began to climb out. One of the guards exposed the upper half of his body from the improvised sunroof with an arm's-length of olive drab cylinder on his shoulder; crowning the tube was an ugly, oblong object Meira recognized as a rocket grenade of some sort. The guard set something else on top of the roof, something Meira could only guess was an automatic rifle. Glass smashed outward from the rear-facing door of the vehicle, and a malicious-looking muzzle brake peeked through.

            A flurry of communication, too fast for words, flew among the Suits and their Dispatcher. Afterwards, when things had calmed down and she chose to think about it, she knew what they had said: _threat assessment: light machine gun, personal artillery, armored vehicle, unknown number hostiles inside structure; please advise. _And the Dispatcher's response: _activate autonomous action protocols for duration of encounter; delete hostile programs; be advised: no neutral templates available for respawn within ~~~._ Whatever distance the Dispatcher had indicated could only be translated in Meira's mind as "very far away." 

            Time slowed as Meira scrambled over the center console of her car and crouched within the passenger side footwell – while the Suits and the criminals never seemed to see her when she concealed herself reasonably well, that was no guarantee that bullets and shrapnel wouldn't find her. Even so, her cover seemed far too scant. A disconsolate howling screeched from the olive drab tube, and she could see the grenade's path as it streaked towards the Suits' windshield. The three Suits dove from the vehicle, moving impossibly quickly. The grenade detonated with a bowel-shaking thud, spewing fire and deadly shrapnel in all directions, rendering the car into an ugly, fiery ruin and smashing Meira's rear window into a complex spiderweb. The Suits tumbled with a gymnast's grace away from the explosion, stood again with preternatural calm and unruffled, perfectly tailored suits. Their heads tracked like turrets and fixed on the SUV, now illuminated by the sedan's wreckage rather than its spotlights. Two Suits on the left side of the ruined sedan; one on the right. Each drew a heavy caliber pistol from his jacket and trained it on the vehicle.

            Over the crackle of flames, Meira could hear the guard curse as he discarded the smoking tube and shoulder the rifle he had set atop the roof. She could see that it had a long, curving magazine with another taped beside it. The heavier machine gun within the cargo compartment stuttered to life, spraying deadly arcs of fire towards the two Suits to the left of the burning sedan. The guard with the automatic rifle opened up on the lone Suit from the right side, issuing a lighter, staccato report. Meira shrieked in alarm from the noise as the three Suits seemed to blur and dance in place, bullets pocking the pavement around them uselessly. She had seen this before, but had no time to ponder how the Suits could do what was patently impossible; instead, she opened the passenger side door behind her and squirmed her way underneath the car.

            While she worked her way under the car, a rapid conference call among the three Suits buzzed through her mind: _elevate above gunner's arc of fire and engage topmost rebel; I will flank and advance. _A niggling sense of recognition itched at her mind, but she didn't have time to contemplate the vague déjà vu. The response came immediately from two distinct Suit-voices: _concur. _For a moment, she felt sorry for the two criminals. Meira squirmed far enough towards the driver's side under the car to see the Suits' tactic in action. One of the two Suits pinned down by the machine gun _jumped, _leaving his colleague to dance around the bullets. The Suit leaped nearly twice his own body height and, with legs curled beneath him like a bullfrog at rest, his free hand curled above his head like a fencer, his gun hand thrust with a purpose at the guard standing through the roof of the vehicle, fired three shots. Two bullets hit the roof with a sharp _pang _that echoed louder than the reports of the rifle and machine gun. Though she couldn't possibly have heard the sound of the third bullet, she imagined vividly the sickening wet smack as it hit the exposed guard. The rifle fire stopped abruptly as the luckless guard spun in place, the top of his head neatly clipped off, his ballcap fluttering to the ground.

            The Suit landed neatly and rolled to the side, the better to distract the machine-gunner still stuttering away inside the vehicle. The lone Suit who was dodging the rifle fire strode purposefully around the side of the vehicle; from her vantage, Meira could hear the soft rubber of his shoes padding across the pavement, could see the cuffs of his brown, less than perfectly stylish trousers. The way he walked reminded her of someone, but she was sure she didn't know anyone in this peculiar government agency. The Suit stopped for a moment, still facing away from her and towards the vehicle; he was only two meters away, and she felt sure he could hear her heart pounding. She looked up at his broad-shouldered back and well-groomed brown hair and tried to breathe more quietly. With great deliberation, the Suit holstered his pistol back inside his jacket, seemed to pull at his lapels, and craned his neck to the right. Through the ringing in her ears and the yammering of the machine gun, Meira thought she could hear a series of dull cracks as the vertebrae in his neck popped. 

            With his neck craned thus, the Suit seemed to look over his shoulder, in Meira's general direction. The sharp outline of his aquiline nose and slight receding hairline seemed bizarrely familiar to her, but she knew that was absurd. She could sense a curious feeling of inquisitiveness coming from the Suit, and a communication fragment from him: _anomalous readings . . ., _interrupted by one of his colleagues: _complete the flanking maneuver. _Through her panic, she knew somehow that scrambling from her position right then would be worse than useless. The Suit turned his attention back to the vehicle, and moved with a burst of such blinding speed that bits of gravel and dust pattered at Meira's face. He covered the intervening five meters or so in less than two seconds and tore the back door off its hinges as easily as one might open an envelope. With his other hand, he pulled the rear seat from its mountings and tossed it aside. The machine gun halted, and through the ringing in her ears Meira could hear a panicked scream. The Suit disappeared into the back seat, and the vehicle began a frightful rocking back and forth. In the disturbance, the dead guard slumped over the roof of the vehicle was unceremoniously pitched out, and landed in a boneless huddle. The rear cargo doors burst open as though they were in an old-time saloon, and the other parka-clad criminal fairly flew from inside the vehicle. He skidded and tumbled to a halt some few meters away from the truck and lay quite still.

            The two Suits outside halted their serpentine dances as soon as the machine gun stopped; they smoothed the lapels of their jackets and approached the vehicle. Meira could easily see their faces from here, but they were meaningless to her. All of the Suits were uniformly anonymous, usually with bland, nondescript features that made them all the more menacing and standardized rectangular sunglasses and coil-wire earpieces. The third stepped from the cargo compartment and faced his colleagues.

            One of the other two spoke aloud, tonelessly, "Is there a problem?"

            The other continued, "You hesitated."

            The third Suit, the one who nearly noticed Meira, replied, "The anomaly. But I can no longer detect it."

            The sound of the third Suit's voice brought a dizzying sense of vertigo to Meira. She'd heard that voice before, and it struck at her for its familiarity in a way that the alien nature of their other communications did not. Where did she know that voice? She began to breathe faster.

            The other two Suits paused a moment, examining their surroundings without expression. "Let's go."

            Meira held her breath as the two stepped around the third and walked stolidly towards the warehouse. The third Suit pivoted smoothly on his heel and followed close behind. As the trio circled the wrecked SUV and walked past Meira's hiding place, the third looked pointedly in her direction without seeming to see her, and for the first time she could clearly see that Suit's face. She stifled a gasp as a shock of recognition bolted through her. Disjointed memories coursed through her mind, memories of a bright summer day; of a sudden, vicious riot that shook that affluent part of the city; of a shock of _otherness _spreading out from her core to her extremities, forcing her consciousness back into a small space within her, alive but confined; of pursuit, and violence, and death; of a car smashing into her, breaking her body; and of the _otherness _leaving her, leaving her violated consciousness to reinhabit her broken, pain-wracked body. 

            A distinct image formed itself in her mind, a memory of a nightmare she'd been having for almost a year now. A memory of straddling a young, hard-faced woman lying in the street, of pressing a forearm (_brown poly-synth-wool sleeves i don't wear brown i look terrible in this fabric who wears this color?_) into her throat, leaning into her, sneering at her, relishing the look of fear and resignation on her face. Wanting to peer into her eyes, but only seeing the reflection in her sunglasses – only seeing twin reflections of a face sneering back at her in the lenses. That face . . . so hard and angry and full of hate, a face not her own, a face with a set, square jaw, bared teeth, hawk-like nose, receding hairline . . . _I know him! _she thought with a sudden delirious clarity. _I know that man. _

            _He . . . he was me!_


	3. Chapter 3, Communication

            Staring after the three Suits as they walked into the warehouse office, Meira struggled to master herself, to fight down the panic. She didn't notice that, after the first two Suits disappeared into office, the third Suit stopped in the doorway. She didn't notice him turn so that he was half facing the torn open SUV, nor did she see him draw that long, snubnosed pistol. She _did _take notice, however, when three shots barked out and punctured the front grille of the vehicle. A tiny shriek escaped her lips, and she clapped both hands over her mouth, fearful that she would draw the Suit's attention. _Fat lot of good that does me, _she thought, scolding herself as she planted her hands back on the pavement. _Talk about locking the garage after someone already stole your car._ The Suit didn't seem to hear her; he fired twice more, each bullet bursting a tire. Something hissed merrily from the SUV's engine block. Meira was no mechanic, but she was sure the truck was going to be nobody's getaway vehicle today. The third Suit stepped into the darkness of the warehouse office.

            After the Suit closed the door behind him, she edged herself backwards as slowly as she could. Fighting back the panic attack from having seen and inexplicably recognized that one particular Suit out of the dozens she'd seen over the last year was far from easy. And it wasn't that she just recognized that Suit, but that the recognition seemed so _intimate, _and that he bore an uncanny resemblance to the Suit in her recurring dreams. _No, that's not an uncanny resemblance. That's _the guy. _But why is he in that dream? What does it have to do with that riot and my . . . episode?_ She kneeled there in the dust and tried to recall exactly what happened to her that summer day. The riot didn't even make it to the news -- it was like everybody forgot it ever happened. The doctors told her she had been injured in a hit and run, and that whatever she imagined to be a riot and violence and gunshots were likely a result of shock. 

            Meira sneered a little, remembering the pity in the doctors' eyes. She was glad she never told them the part of her (_hallucination? dream?_) where she was chasing someone down, moving with incredible speed and grace; glad she never said a thing about pulling a gun from seemingly nowhere and shooting, shooting, shooting until a bullet finally found its mark at the small of the woman's back; relieved that she said nothing about nudging the fallen woman over onto her back, watching with grim satisfaction as her feet drummed a nerve damage-induced tattoo on the ground, straddling her ruined, bloody abdomen and choking the life out of her with a forearm. Meira knew she would never see the light of day again if she told them about seeing that horrifying reflection in the poor woman's sunglasses.

            She stood up, tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and dusted off her jeans and leather jacket. Her hand came across a small, finger-width tear in her sleeve, and noted that part of the leather was charred. A chill ran through her that had nothing to do with the cool summer night as she realized that she was barely kissed by a piece of shrapnel from the rocket grenade. 

            Though Meira generally had no great use for the criminals, she felt obligated to check on the one who had manned the machine gun; the other one, crumpled up next to the SUV, wouldn't need checking on at all. She hurried over to the man, and as she kneeled down, she heard muffled gunshots from inside the warehouse -- sometimes the heavy, booming reports of the Suits' pistols, sometimes the lighter snaps of smaller caliber arms, or the rapid, mechanical stutter of an automatic weapon. The man's pulse was thready and weak, and he was barely breathing. A quick inspection told her that the criminal's pharynx had collapsed, his jaw broken, his skull fractured at the temples, his ears both bleeding, one eye swollen shut and leaking a sickly dark fluid . . . he would surely die unless he got to a hospital, and she knew there wasn't one for miles around. She fought down nausea, and was barely winning.

            There was a fluttering buzz, like that of a large winged insect, coming from the unlucky criminal's parka. Meira could hear a faint burbling noise as the man breathed a little faster, opened his good eye, and looked from Meira to his pocket and back again. He moved as if to retrieve his phone, but the painfully irregular angle of his elbow prevented any sort of movement like that. An anguished moan escaped his lips as his eye rolled in agony. He looked at Meira again, pleadingly. Gingerly, she took the phone from the broken man's pocket and answered.

            "H-hello?"

            A pause on the other end, and then a sharp sounding male voice answered, "Who is this?" Meira started to answer, but the voice interrupted her. "Never mind. Look, I don't know how you're not one of them right now, Miss Blue Pill, but you've got to help my friend here."

            "He . . . he's injured, badly. He needs an ambulance--"

            "That's not going to happen. This is what you need to do. I need you to take him into the warehouse. There's a phone in there."

            "What?" she cried out, incredulously. The insanity of the situation caught up with her, and she was shy no more. "You must be outside your god damned mind. There's a _war _happening in there! The Suits are probably shooting everyone, and I don't think they're going to care that I'm not a terrorist."

            Muffled voices on the other end, and then, "Oh, shit. The hardline. They've cut the--"

            But Meira stopped listening. This was getting to be a little too ridiculously dangerous, and more than a little absurd, even for her. Blue Pills? Hard lines? Getting a mortally injured man to a _phone _when there was a phone right in her hand? She didn't need this, not one little bit. She stood up abruptly, but the man's good arm lashed out and he grabbed her by the calf with astonishing strength. Startled, she looked back down at the dying man. Something unintelligible burbled from his lips; his jaw was broken, but he was straining to communicate _something _to her. She knelt down again, the phone still to her ear.

            "Oh, Jesus, don't talk, are you crazy?"

            The words were barely a whisper, and more than a little difficult to understand. "Please . . . unplug . . . me . . . please . . ." A tear squeezed from his good eye.

            She repeated the words aloud to herself and, incidentally, over the phone. "Please unplug me? I don't understand. Look, you shouldn't--"

            A despairing voice replaced the sharpness from before. "Did he just ask that? To unplug him?"

            "Wh-what?"

            The volatile voice became angry again. "God dammit, Betty McBattery, I didn't stutter! Did he just ask to be unplugged?"

            Not knowing what to make of it, she replied, "Yes. That's what he said."

            The other voice cursed, paused, and then said mournfully, "Look. His name is Yorick, okay? Tell him we're going to unplug him. Tell him exactly that. And that . . . and that I'm sorry."

            Meira didn't know what he was about to do, but he sounded miserable. She said, "What's your name?" After he didn't answer for a moment, she continued, "He'll need to know who said . . ."

            A sharp inhalation and a deep sigh, then, "Never mind that. Just tell him the Operator said so. He'll know."

            The gunfire inside the warehouse became less intense; only a few shots rang out here and there. Meira knew, despite the danger she was still in, that she was going to be the last face Yorick ever saw. He deserved nothing less than compassion. Carefully, so as to not aggravate his wounds, Meira stroked his blood-matted hair and smiled at him. He had probably been a handsome man at one point. "Yorick? Can you hear me?" The man seemed to stir at the sound of his name. "The Operator, he . . . he said he was going to unplug you, and that he's sorry."

            A pained smile creased the man's face, and then his body relaxed all at once, just as someone does from a fainting spell. She studied his broken face for a moment, and marveled at how peaceful he looked. She must have said as much out loud, for the other voice said, "Yes. It's finished." A click, and Meira knew she had been disconnected from the Operator, whoever he was. A quick check of a pulse told her that Yorick wasn't in pain anymore, either.

            Numbly, she pocketed the phone and rolled Yorick onto his back, and something metallic clattered to the pavement. After closing his one empty-staring eye, her eyes found the pistol that had fallen from Yorick's shoulder holster. Facts sprang into her mind in an alien, unnatural way, and suddenly she knew things about the particular pistol she never needed to know before. _Pistol, semiautomatic, double action, ten millimeter parabellum, 10 round capacity, 740 grams, muzzle velocity 375 meters per second, effective range 80 meters. _She blinked at the sudden burst of information, tried to shake it loose from her head as one does an unexpected bumblebee.

            Meira picked up the pistol gingerly -- in the year she had been following the criminals and watching the Suits, she had never taken a gun with her, but then again, she had never done a lot of things before today's insanity. What was one more? She moved the slide back a fraction, confirmed the presence of a bullet, ejected the magazine, saw that there were nine rounds present, and reinserted it. She did all this gracefully, in three smooth motions, as if she had handled pistols before. As if she had done it for years.

            _But I haven't, _she thought frantically. _I don't know how to do this._ She looked at the pistol in her hand as if it was something from another world and said, "What the hell?" Despite her internal protestations, her hands seemed to know what to do, and now they were retrieving two spare magazines from poor Yorick's shoulder holster.

            Still bewildered, Meira stood up in time to see the warehouse's office door burst open. A slight young man wearing a designer-cut blazer that was just a little too big, a black t-shirt bearing a silk-screened phosphorescent skull, and ovoid sunglasses came running gracelessly from the building. He was talking frantically into a cell phone with one hand and clutching his side with the other. Meira trotted to her car, keeping an eye on the young man the whole while. 

            She heard only a snatch of what the boy was saying into the phone; his voice cracked as he shouted something about ". . . an exit, right now!" The boy seemed so frightened, as any reasonable person should be -- it was inconceivable that this gawky youth could be a hardened criminal. On the other hand, he did have some sort of submachine gun slung over his shoulder. On the third hand, she knew for certain now that whatever these criminals were, they weren't the sort you'd find in the movies. She rested a hand casually on the handle of the car door, and let the pistol hang heavily from her other hand.

            The boy finally noticed her and skidded to a halt, some three meters away from Meira. She wanted to laugh at how comically frightened he was, but then remembered that he, too, was armed. He looked at her with wide eyes as if he expected her to become a monster at any moment, and stuttered something into his phone. Against all reason or sanity, she made her decision.

            "Well, come on, then. The Suits will be out here any minute."

            "Su . . . Suits. Shit. Uh, what do I do?" This was into his phone, but she answered him anyway.

            "You get in the car, is what you do. I don't know what the hell your people are up to, but I just watched Yorick get unplugged, which means he's dead now." The boy nodded at her, seeming to know as a fact of life that whatever "unplugging" was, it meant death for them. "Way I figure it, you all didn't run out of there as soon as the Suits showed up, so it must have been important. And now all of you are dead, except for you, right?"

            The boy shook his head dumbly. "No. Some got out. Then they cut the hardline. I need an exit." His voice sounded ghostly, sad, frightened, and absurdly youthful. _This kid can't be older than eighteen,_ she realized. His face had a pleasant, boyishly handsome oval shape, and had likely never seen a razor. _No time for this, _she thought viciously.

            Meira shook her head did her best to sigh heavily, like a teacher might. "I'm not going to pretend to know what you're talking about, kiddo, but you had better get in this car if you want out of here. Maybe we can find your exit somewhere else, where there are fewer Suits." She opened the driver side door and shot the boy a look.

            The boy trotted around the car when a low, heavy bark echoed from the office door. The boy cried out and clutched at his right calf. Cursing, Meira crouched low and fired a few shots at the warehouse while the boy hobbled himself around to the passenger side. The sound was astonishing, and the recoil surprised her -- she had never fired a pistol before, but it felt as natural to her as breathing. She couldn't see the Suit who had shot at them, but she didn't expect to hit him anyway. _This is crazy, shooting at them. I'm going to be on their shit list for sure, now._

            The passenger side door opened and closed behind her, and the boy wheezed out, "Get in, drive! I'll cover." She ducked in and saw the boy seated in the passenger seat, his face streaming with sweat and contorted in pain, his right hand thrust up and over the roof and firing blindly. The steady crackling of the submachine gun echoed loudly inside the sedan. Meira crouched over the steering wheel as she turned the keys in the ignition. _This would be the perfect time for this damn thing to not start._

            But for a wonder, the engine turned over on the first attempt, and she sped out of the parking lot. She couldn't spare any attention for the rearview, and the boy was slouched low in his seat, trying to apply pressure to his calf. Her tires squealed and screeched as she made hairpin zigzagging movements, the better to confuse the Suits' fire. Previously, she wouldn't have known to do that either. 

            She didn't have time to think about it, however; the Suits' communication flitted through her mind: _they have escaped. _A second voice inquired: _anomalous readings. query anomaly aided rebel program?_ The third, familiar voice replied bluntly: _yes._ She shivered involuntarily at that voice. After a moment, the first Suit observed: _no functioning means of transportation for pursuit. _It almost sounded reproachful, and directed at that third Suit who had disabled the SUV. The third Suit replied: _irrelevant. we will establish a search pattern to locate possible egress points, load into neutral templates where available and proceed with debugging._ The bizarre communication the Suits shared faded from Meira's perception. That communication, whatever it was, always seemed cold to her, but now it seemed downright inhuman.

            When Meira could no longer perceive the Suits, she turned her attention to the boy, who had applied a crude pressure bandage constructed from the sling of his submachine gun and a section of bloodied fabric from the cuff of his pants. She admired his presence of mind -- few boys his age would have thought to do that. As a matter of fact, most people she knew, regardless of age, would have just passed out from the shock. His right hand, slicked with blood, gripped the handle of his weapon tightly; his left was tucked inside his jacket.

            "How's that leg?"

            "Could be worse. It went right through -- didn't get the bone. Sucks, but I'll live. I might even walk."

            She marveled at his youthful bravado. The wound looked to be pretty bad. "Broken ribs too, huh?" she inquired, shifting her eyes back to the road.

            "Uh, yeah. It hurts. Agent Jackass back there drop-kicked me one." He chuckled morbidly and leaned back into the headrest. "Heh, I need to get my phone, call Tank, get an exit. But I dropped it back there."

            "I don't think tanks are going to help us, but I don't doubt you can get your hands on some."

            The boy laughed again, but a little too hard this time; his face dissolved into agony and a pained coughing fit. "Oh, man, I'm so screwed."

            The words belonged to an eighteen-year-old who stayed out too late or dented his dad's car, but the voice belonged to someone else entirely. "Who _are _you, anyway?"

            The boy looked at her askance, then smiled sheepishly. Blood polluted the whiteness of his teeth. "Oh, heh, sorry. My name's Mouse."

            That wasn't what she meant, but that would do for now.


	4. Chapter 4, Transportation

            Meira and the young man called Mouse drove in silence awhile, punctuated only occasionally by the latter's tight, labored breathing. He seemed to have staunched the bleeding in his leg, but still looked rather pale and withdrawn. The residual fright from their narrow escape abated somewhat, and Meira found that she could now address practical matters.

            "We need to ditch this car, kiddo. We need to find a place to patch you up properly, and get you back to your people." Her knuckles began to turn white on the steering wheel, no small feat considering how dark her skin was. "The car's most important. Back window's all smashed up from that explosion, and I bet my tail lights are out too. Last thing we need is a cop pulling us over for that and seeing us with the guns and you all shot up."

            The last comment seemed to rouse the young man. Barely a whisper, he said, "No cops. We can't get stopped by cops, not now. The Agents . . ." his speech devolved into a pained moan as he clutched at his side.

            She nodded, and noted that he said Agents with a capital A in the same way she said Suits with a capital S. _It doesn't matter what anyone calls them -- they're bad news with a capital B. _For all that her strange sensitivity to the Suits disturbed her, she was thankful for it now, for none of them seemed to be around just then. "Yeah, we need another car. You just relax, before you go into shock."

            "I'll be okay. This was in my training. It's all in my head anyway." He chuckled, but broke it off with a painful grimace.

            Meira looked sidelong at the young man, worrying that he may be in shock already. The broken ribs and hole through his leg were certainly not just "in his head." She slowed a bit, and kept a keen eye out for likely vehicles in the warehouse district. The trouble was, she didn't know how to break into a car or hotwire one.

            "Listen, Mouse. We may find a car, but do you know how to steal one?"

            He shook his head. "Nah. I mean, I can, but I don't usually go around with that program loaded. It's not part of the standard loadout, but maybe it should be. I'll have to remember that."

            Meira knitted her eyebrows. She thought maybe he was going a little crazy with the pain and blood loss, but he sounded completely sure of himself. "Well, we'll have a tough time of it then. I've never stolen a car in my life." She almost told him that she'd bought this particular car for perhaps a few hundred dollars, if only to spare her actual vehicle the sort of abuse a vehicle might take while spying on criminals like him and watching for Suits. But that sort of disclosure seemed unwise -- why tell this Mouse person more than he needed to know?

            He sounded wistful as he continued, "See, I told you we're screwed. If I had my phone, I could call up Tank and see if he can teach me a thing or two about stealing cars and maybe getting an exit. Maybe you oughta just let me out here; you don't need to get in trouble because of me. Maybe Tank will get my signal and send Apoc and those guys out to get me. He might not get a good signal if I'm moving around so much."

            Meira ground her teeth together. The boy was talking pure nonsense now. "That's enough. I don't care to get in trouble from the cops or the Suits or whoever, but I really don't care to let you out here and have the Suits eat you for breakfast. The longer you're out there alone, the more likely it is that'll happen, if you don't bleed out, get gangrene in your leg, or simply die from shock. Whatever . . . bug or transponder you have that might allow your friend to find you, don't you think the Suits can find you too? I've been watching them, you know. They're very good." She knew she said too much then, but the boy needed sense talked into him.

            The boy nodded, seeming to see things her way. Then, of a sudden, he looked alarmed. "You go _looking _for them? Are you crazy? They'll kill you, you know."

            "Government agents don't just kill people. I know they don't. I haven't done anything wrong. Well, at least until tonight." She shivered at the memory of the pistol's recoil in her hand, and looked at it now like it had crawled out from under a rock.

            Mouse laughed mournfully. "Government agents? You don't understand, lady. They . . ." he broke off then, looking as if he too had said too much. 

            Which was just as well; she didn't want to push him. Meira spotted an unattended pickup truck near a darkened warehouse. She pulled into the lot next to the truck and killed the engine.

            More calmly now, Mouse said, "You said that you've been watching them, and you said they 'don't just kill people.' But you've seen them kill people. You've seen them do some crazy things."

            "I've seen them kill people who were trying to kill them," she said, the lie sounding unconvincing in her ears. "That guy Yorick was shooting a _machine gun _at them, a big one --"

            "And did he hit a single Agent?" Meira didn't have an answer, so she just looked at him. He still looked clammy and pale, and his mouth still had a bit of blood at the corners, but he seemed much more alert. "Come on. Let's see what we can do about the truck."

            Her eyes widened in alarm as the young man opened his door and started to climb out. She reached out, but he was already out of the car. He was a little unsteady, but standing upright. _How in the hell?_

            "Hey!" she called out as she got out of the car. "Your leg . . ."

            "It's all right. Good as new. Well, not so new, but it doesn't matter. My leg's not really hurt. Now if I can just convince myself my ribs aren't broken, I'll be fine." He smiled wanly at her.

            Meira looked at him uncertainly. "You must be outside your god damned mind. All of you." She shoved her hands into her jacket pockets.

            Mouse leaned against the truck's cab and said, "Yeah, well. I guess we can check under the frame. Maybe they left a spare key --"

            "Woah, hey," interjected Meira, looking distracted. "There's, uh . . . something different about your phones? Different from regular cell phones."

            "Uh, yeah. They use our hacked signals . . ."

            "And you wanted to talk to your friend, right?" A mischievous smile played over her lips.

            "Yeah, Tank. Why . . .?"

            She produced a matte black phone from her pocket, the spring loaded receiver still open and exposing the keypad.

            "Holy shit!" Mouse pushed himself from the truck and nearly fell as he hobbled over to Meira. "Where did you get this?"

            "I must have kept it after Yorick died. Same as the gun. Can you use it to talk to your friend?"

            "Yeah, just gimme a minute. Keep an eye out for the cops, okay?" Without waiting for her answer, the young man started fiddling with the phone. 

            Meira turned away as Mouse went to work. The pistol hung heavy in her hand, a weight both alien and familiar. She thought maybe a pistol was such a simple tool that anyone would feel comfortable with it, but as much as she liked the idea, she discarded it immediately. If it was simple, why did so many people end up accidentally shooting their friends or themselves? She knew with a resolute certainty that she would never shoot someone out of clumsiness.

            While Mouse worked, she more or less ignored him, but did hear snatches of the boy muttering to himself, and once saw him chew his thumbnail in a peculiar way while he stared at the phone. Instead, she tried to become more familiar with the pistol. She pointed it away into the murky gloom, and noted that her hands seemed unnaturally steady, her breathing regular and measured. She held it with one hand, and then with two; both felt comfortable and natural. That, by itself, was cause for consternation. She held it in her left hand, and then her right; both resulted in steady aim and a surety that she could hit what she was pointing at. That was utterly unnatural -- she had always been stronger with her left hand than with her right.

            Holding the pistol in both hands, one leg cocked behind the other so as to give an imaginary attacker a smaller profile to shoot at, Meira aimed at her car's driver-side door. She gasped as a flicker of light played over the door; in a movement too quick for thought, she spun in place and let herself fall, her rear end hitting the ground hard, her pistol pointed up and away. But there was no one there.

            Alarmed, Mouse dropped to one knee and reached for his submachine gun. "Shit. Agent?"

            Meira shook her head and stood up. "Ah, no. Sorry. Thought I saw something. Nobody here but us." Mouse looked at her uncertainly, stood, and refocused on the phone.

            As she dusted herself, she wondered about that drop to the ground. Sure, it seemed wise, if someone was indeed behind her, but she figured that sort of reaction developed with experience in combat, and with the proper training. She had neither. Warily, she brought the gun to bear on her car again, willing herself to not see what she thought she saw. Alas, like so many other things gone completely haywire that night, the sprite came back. Or, that's what she thought it was. Meira aimed at the door again, and a dime-sized luminescent blue dot appeared there. She swung her arm to the rear tire, and sure enough, the dot tracked with where she expected a bullet to go.

            "Mouse? Uh. Do you all carry pistols with laser sights on them?"

            "Not usually," he replied distractedly. "We're all pretty good shots without them."

            Meira grunted and looked at the pistol suspiciously. Though it went against every instinct, natural and alien, she pointed the pistol at her right palm, which was much paler than the rest of her skin. The round sprite was there, still dime sized, but blinking red, about twice a second, like a mark of the stigmata. _That's not right, _she thought. _I've played with laser pointers. The dot is supposed to get bigger when it's right up against something. And what's with the blinking? _She aimed it again at the car, and the blue dot played over the windshield and inside the car, where the bullet would surely pass through the glass. Peripherally, she noted hazy blue blurs within the car's cab, on Mouse's body, and on the truck. Somehow, she knew for a fact that those were possible ricochet paths and targets. Irrationally angry now, she ejected the magazine and racked the slide to eject the round in the chamber, and pointed again at the car. Meira was rewarded this time with no sprite at all. Mechanically, she added the loose round back into the magazine, inserted it into the magazine well, and racked the slide again. 

            She caught Mouse eyeing her over the cell phone. "Any luck?" she said before he could ask anything uncomfortable.

            "Yeah, I think so. Hopefully Morpheus hasn't changed _Nebuchadnezzar_'s incoming comm access freqs." He still seemed distracted, and began pushing buttons on the keypad as if to dial someone. He must have hit fifteen successive keys before Meira stopped counting. She guessed that Morpheus must be a colleague of his, but couldn't fathom who or what was named after that old Babylonian king.

            Mouse pressed the phone to his ear and chewed at the cuticle of his thumb. He listened awhile, and she guessed that he heard what he wanted to, for relief flooded into his youthful face. "Tank! Oh, man, it's good to hear you. I'm using a phone from one of the guys on the _Hokkaido. _I don't think many of them made it out. You won't believe this though. Are you picking this up? Do you see this?" He stared intently at Meira for a moment, and then spoke again, "No, it's cool. Look, if that was going to happen, don't you think it would have already? Something weird about her, man, but I don't care. She saved my ass back there." She squinted at him a little, not appreciating being talked about as if she wasn't there. "Look, let's talk about this later, huh? I'll clean the nutrient dispensers for like a month if you can do two things for me. Hit me with a program to break into and hotwire a late model half ton pickup truck, and find me an _exit._"

            Mouse listened another moment, and said to Meira with more animation that she'd seen in him, "All right. We're gonna get out of here, no problem. I'm gonna start the truck, okay, but you gotta--" Mouse stiffened, his face going suddenly tense as if someone touched him with a live wire. Alarmed, Meira reached out to him, but Mouse relaxed again after only a moment. "Right, so. You're going to have to drive. My leg only hurts a little, but it doesn't work well enough to drive."

            "What in the hell was that?"

            "What? Oh, that? Ah, nothing. Don't worry. Look, there's no good way to break into the truck, it looks like. We're going to have to smash the window. After that, I'm going to need a crowbar or something like it. Do you have one in the trunk, maybe?"

            Numbly, Meira moved towards the trunk of her battered car while Mouse kept talking into the phone. It took some doing to open the trunk, due to the shrapnel, but after a moment, she retrieved a tire iron and a short handled hatchet. She came back, holding both tools in one hand, and the pistol in the other.

            "Good, okay. Now, first, we could use the axe," he took it from her, "and get into the truck like _so._" With a single well-placed stroke, Mouse smashed the driver's side window, and used the axe blade to clear the remaining glass out. "Er, it's going to be a little loud when you're driving. Sorry." Meira shook her head, but didn't say anything. He dropped the axe, took the tire iron, and handed her the phone. "Here, you talk to Tank awhile while I fiddle with the truck."

            She turned away from the truck and stared at the phone as if it was something alien. She wasn't altogether sure she wanted to talk to Tank. Plastic and metal screeched and groaned behind her as Mouse went to work. She pressed the phone to her ear and listened for a moment.

            A male Latino voice murmured, ". . . the loading program took a little longer than usual, sir, but I think it was because of the different software Mouse was using . . . I'm not sure how he got a hold of a _Hokkaido _phone. Could be the Blue Pill took it . . . I don't know, sir, she's not reading right at all, here. I thought it was a problem with the Matrix feed, but it's localized on her signal. Oh. Shit. Hello?"

            An engine roared to life behind her. Meira let the phone fall from her ear as she turned and saw Mouse, who was grinning smugly. "All right, ready to rock and roll! I think I know where the exit is."

            "Great," she said, trying to not sound too nervous. "We don't need to keep your friend on the line, do we? You can call him back if we need directions." She slid the receiver closed over the keypad, and pocketed the phone.

            "Sure, yeah."

            As Meira climbed into the driver's seat and drove where Mouse directed, she tried to puzzle out what the man called Tank meant by "her signal" and "Matrix feed," what happened that Mouse suddenly knew how to hotwire the truck, and why exactly the colored sprites flickered in her vision when she aimed the pistol. She could find no answers within, and Mouse wasn't volunteering anything. She entertained the thought of letting every question in her head spill out of her mouth now, but decided against it; as friendly as he was, she wasn't certain he'd tell her what she wanted to know. However, this Morpheus person, he seemed to be the kid's boss, of a sort. If Morpheus would be there to pick Mouse up and treat his injuries, she would get her answers from him. Her right hand dropped to the pistol by her side.

_            Damn right I'm going to get some answers._


	5. Chapter 5, Confrontation

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: Originally, I had chapters 5 and 6 lumped into a single chapter, but damn all if it didn't get to be ponderously long. I've noticed the chapters get longer as I go on, and I'm trying to get better about it. I welcome feedback on this chapter and the next regarding the voices of the Matrix characters -- that is, does Morpheus _sound _like Morpheus? Would you believe Switch to say some of the things she does? Of course, I also welcome any other feedback you have.          _

            After driving through parts of town that Meira had no desire to see, Mouse finally directed her to park near a ramshackle slum that even local drug addicts and vagabonds seemed to have abandoned. She was imperfectly pleased to be trudging up the stairs in the abandoned tenement, half-supporting Mouse's weight. On the other hand, she had little reason to be pleased with anything at all that had happened in the past few hours. It smelled like dust and years-old urine and mildew; chunks of plaster and what she hoped wasn't asbestos littered the floor. Something unpleasantly organic crunched beneath Meira's boot.

            "Why in the hell did your people decide to come _here, _of all places?"

            "This is where the exit is. Room 301," he replied, as if that explained everything. A thin sheen of sweat covered his face; he was clearly in pain, but doing his best to not show it.

            "Third floor," she said, partly to herself. "They must know you've been shot in the leg. You told them that?"

            "Yeah. It's okay though, don't worry. I'm just glad they can get me at all."

            "You must work for some real bastards."

            "No, they're good people. Just, you know, kinda serious all the time." He grinned widely, as though a bullet through the calf, a broken rib or two, and inhumanly deadly government soldiers lurking everywhere wasn't anything to be serious about.

            They rounded the second floor landing, and Meira chanced the question she'd so far delayed asking directly. "What is this exit you keep talking about?"

            Mouse's good humor faded after a moment. "I, uh . . . I don't know that I can talk about that."

            "Don't be ridiculous. I've seen more than I ever wanted to tonight -- what's one more thing?"

            Mouse frowned and shook his head. "No, I can't. If anyone's going to tell you, Morpheus will. I mean, he usually does it, you know?" She didn't. "But this is so messed up right now. You shouldn't even be here."

            They crested the stairs, and Mouse led them off to the right without hesitating, as if he'd lived here his whole life. She chuckled, but her voice had no humor in it. "I'd've thought you'd be glad I was here."

            "Oh, I am! But it's like, it shouldn't have happened like that. You should've become an Agent, and then I should be dead, or worse, captured." Meira had a thrill of terror in her belly she couldn't put a name to, and tried to ask what Mouse meant, but he stopped them in front of a door. "All right. 301." He took his left arm from Meira's shoulders and put a little more weight on his wounded leg.

            Meira's left hand tightened on her pistol; unconsciously, she shifted her right foot behind her left. Her neck felt uncommonly tense. Even as she tilted her head to the left and felt her vertebrae crackle, she thought to herself, _I must be tired. I never do that. Mama said I'd get arthritis if I did that._ Mouse reached for the doorknob. Meira focused on the door and imagined who might be behind it. Three mottled human-shaped figures shimmered into being, as though she could see through the door and wall; three ghostly figures, bright, hot white in their faces, and varying shades of red and purple throughout their bodies. Cutting through the shock of the apparent hallucination was the memory of seeing a television special on night vision and infrared cameras. Before she could process what was happening, Mouse threw the open the door.

            "Tastee Wheat Pizza!" he announced, laughing good-naturedly.

            As the door opened, two of the mottled figures were replaced by more recognizable humans; the third was behind the wall off to her right, and with a remote part of her mind, Meira guessed she wouldn't see him until she was in the room. The swinging door first revealed the figure in the middle, a beefy, imposing bald man smiling benevolently and wearing a reflective pince-nez and a long, black leather overcoat. His forearms were folded serenely behind his back, parallel to the ground. Mouse strode into the room as if his leg was completely whole, his arms outstretched. The door swung open fully to reveal the leftmost figure, a wiry, hard-faced woman with pale, almost sickly skin and a shock of cropped, bleached hair. She was half facing the door, wearing a knee-length white leather coat and a very unpleasant look.

            "Down!" the woman cried as she raised the nickel-plated pistol in her right hand. Time wound down to a crawl for Meira; even the pitch of the woman's cry slid down an eerie glissando to a long, low, unearthly howl. The immediate danger of a stranger pointing a pistol at her pierced her fog of bewilderment like a rapier. Seemingly of its own accord, her own pistol thrust out from her body, and she watched the blue sprite skip its way up the length of the blond woman's body. She had no time to wonder as other, stranger things happened to her vision: a grid of green lines snapped over the woman's body, conforming to her every curve and edge; the green lines bled into red over certain parts of her body -- the center of her chest and right flank, her face, her neck, her groin; tiny, unobtrusive numbers centered near those vital areas, all of them indicating numbers near one point five meters. 

            A distant part of her mind wondered if this was what a drug addict felt when taking psychedelics. She felt as though she could move her body just as fast as she ever could, but everything else was happening at a languid, leisurely pace. She knew she could shoot at any time and be safe from this woman, but would she get the answers she needed? _No. I can't kill her. I don't even know if I'm capable of it. _Glancing quickly at the others, she saw that the large man in the center had turned his head towards his blond companion, and his mouth was also open in a cry; by the shape his lips made, she guessed he was saying, "No." Mouse was to her right and looked alarmed -- it would be dangerous for him if the blonde actually fired and missed. Obscured somewhat in the dimness of the room was a Latino man with his hair slicked back into a ponytail, and a nasty little snubnosed machine pistol pointed in her general direction. He had the gun turned about ninety degrees to the left, as though he were a street hoodlum. An identical green grid with red indicators of vital areas settled over his frame as well; the numbers indicated he was four point three meters away. She knew then that a shooting match in this small room would be an exercise in slaughter.

            A bloom of fire erupted from the barrel of the blond woman's pistol, obscuring her screaming rictus for what seemed like an entire second to Meira. Though she'd never fired a gun before that night, she knew that the flashes should be all but imperceptible, under normal circumstances. These were anything but normal. The flash died away, and she could see the pistol's slide was locked back, could detect the rippling of tendons in the woman's wrist, tense from recoil. Panic coursed through her for a moment, but then she spied something moving towards her at a startlingly normal speed. A blunt coppery slug was moving at a slow walking pace towards her, leaving circular disturbances in the air in its wake. A grid of bright red lines snapped over it. The resolution on the lines was great enough to even see the curve of the hollowed out tip. She focused on the bullet a moment, and numbers sprang into being next to it, indicating its velocity and distance (both with scrolling, steadily decreasing numbers) as well as its caliber. She wondered briefly where it would go if she got out of its way, and thin, purple vector lines sprouted from the back and front of the slug, pointing in one direction back towards the pistol, and the other direction right towards her left armpit. She knew her anatomy well enough, and hypothesized that a hollowpoint .45 piercing her there would leave quite a mess inside, and outside as well.

            By this time, the bullet was within reach of her outstretched hand, if she wished to grab it. While she could only wonder why all this was happening to her and blessed the fact that she wasn't already dead, she didn't want to push her luck. It looked as though it were simply floating along on wires. Just as the bullet passed under her elbow, another flare burst from the blond woman's pistol. The large bald man was still crying out, and had begun unfolding from his meditative posture. The Latino hadn't moved at all, and hadn't fired, thankfully enough, though she could see a thin purple line sketching the distance from the barrel of his machine pistol to the center of her chest. Mouse seemed to have backed up somewhat, arms coming up in a defensive posture, shock on his face.

            Just before the bullet touched the leather of her jacket, she leaned backwards a little, throwing her right hand behind her to counterbalance the out-thrust left. The slug passed her in its languid way, twisting leisurely on its own long axis, bare inches in front of her sternum. The purple vector line pointed somewhere beyond the open door now -- it would take quite some time to get there. Some of the rings of displaced air broke over her body as the ocean does on the rocks; she could feel as well as hear the sonic disruption the bullet left in its wake. The other bullet would be here soon enough, and a third, likely, as well. 

            She bent back, like a reed in the wind, her arms stretched out like wings. Her own movements seemed so fluid and graceful, as if she had all night to act, as if she could watch every bullet from the blond woman's magazine pass by her and merely step and weave out of each one's way. But twin worries niggled at separate corners of her mind. One clamored for Meira to contemplate whether this was the same phenomenon the Suits experienced when they danced around bullets. The other, more immediate concern, called attention to the encroaching sense of fatigue. Whatever was happening to her, she knew she must be exerting her body a great deal to do it. There was also the matter of bullets flying everywhere. The blonde's barrel flashed a third time. _I've gotta end this. Now._

            After the first bullet was well past her, Meira took three quick steps over to the snarling blond woman. The large bald man was reaching for his companion now; the Latino had his machine pistol still trained on the spot where she was standing a moment before; Meira couldn't see Mouse at all. The blonde's forearm was bent slightly with recoil, and the pistol's slide was racked forward -- another round in the chamber. Batting aside a slowly falling shell casing, Meira stepped behind the blonde and wrested the pistol away with her empty right hand. It took a moment -- she might have been moving impossibly fast, but the woman's grip was strong. That didn't matter, though, not a bit. Something thrummed through Meira's mind: facts and figures of the blonde's pistol. There were five rounds remaining in the new pistol, and seven still in the one she took from Yorick, but with any luck at all, she wouldn't have to pull either trigger.

            In one smooth motion, Meira pointed the nickel-plated pistol back at the blonde's face with her right hand, and rested her left arm on the blonde's shoulder, pointing her original pistol at the Latino. The blue dot rested comfortably in his center of mass. Taking care that the blond woman's body was interposed between her own and the Latino, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She willed herself to relax. Nothing was going to kill her. At least, not right then.

            The low surf roar of noise in the room wound back up abruptly, and Meira could hear the sharp echo of gunshots as well as the tail end of three astonished cries: the blonde's angry shout, the bald man's stern order to desist, and Mouse's dismayed whimper. In the measurable fraction of a second that followed, silence reigned.

            Meira knew timing was critical if she was going to prevent a bloodbath. Before the four criminals could survey the suddenly altered tableau and regain their bearings, she shouted, "Drop it, _mijo, _or Snow White gets one in her ear. Savvy?" She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt, and hoped her exhaustion didn't show. 

            The Latino's eyes and pistol tracked over to Meira like a turret. The blond woman tensed visibly and breathed in sharply. A purple vector line from his weapon wavered between her own face and the blonde's. _He'd as likely kill her as me -- I expect that bullet would keep going, too, and poke out my eye for me._

            Before she could shout another warning, the bald man spoke a single, soft word that didn't make much sense to Meira, but sounded like it could have been a name. The Latino squatted slowly and set his machine pistol on the floor, a minute scowl on his face. Meira relaxed; the blonde didn't.

            "What the fuck are you doing?" she asked tightly. "She'll kill us all."

            "No, she won't!" cried Mouse from the doorway, his voice cracking. "She saved my life. She brought me --"

            "If she was going to kill us, we would already be dead." The voice was sonorous and serene, but rumbled with authority. The bald man resumed his monk's pose, his arms folded across the small of his back. A detached smile played over his lips. "You undoubtedly have questions. I, too, have some questions. Perhaps we can sit?"

            He gestured broadly to two dusty, overstuffed burgundy leather chairs with ornate oak scrollwork Meira hadn't seen before. Between them was a small matching end table with a single glass of water and a black bakelite telephone that would have been old forty years before. It seemed utterly out of place.

            "I guess you're Morpheus. I have to say, I don't feel too comfortable having a little chat when your thugs are shooting up the place and Suits can show up any minute."

            "I don't think you have to worry about Switch," he replied generously, nodding to Meira's captive. "And Apoc was good enough to set down his weapon."

            _So that's what he said before. Don't any of these people have regular names? No one named Frank, or Susie? _She took two steps back, training one pistol on Switch, the other on Apoc, and kept her attention on Morpheus. Nobody moved.

            "But first, business. Thank you for bringing Mouse back to us. He's a valuable member of our crew. He's been wounded, and would probably like to get back." Morpheus reached into his coat pocket, and Meira immediately shifted both pistols to bear on the man. He paused, and slowly drew a cellular phone of the same model she took from Yorick. Meira relaxed, but only a little, and slowly pointed the pistols back to her original targets.

            The phone's receiver slid open with a click, and Morpheus touched a button. A moment later, "Mouse is ready. Please extract Apoc and Switch afterwards." He cut off a cry of protest from the other two criminals by holding up a single finger and speaking over them. "I'll need to have a chat with the young lady. . . . No, I realize we usually have more than one person in, but we'll make an exception. Yes, I'm sure." He slid the receiver shut, and half a second later, the old-fashioned telephone jangled to life. A faint green luminescence seemed to sheath itself around the telephone and its cable.

            Morpheus exchanged a look with Mouse, and the lad walked gingerly towards the little table and picked up the receiver. He mouthed a quick "Thank you" to Meira, and pressed the receiver to his ear. A slack look overcame the boy's face, and his eyes rolled up to show the whites; the ghostly green light covering the telephone swept over Mouse as well. Then, something astonishing happened: Mouse seemed to discorporate, his skin, hair, eyes, clothes, submachine gun, everything dissolved into strings of glowing green letters and numbers. The columns of numbers, letters, and other characters Meira hadn't seen before, but somehow recognized, scrolled downward like a neon waterfall. After a moment, the characters faded away, and Mouse was just _gone. _The receiver clattered to the floor.

            Meira was trying to form words, but her lips were failing her. Switch spoke, her voice deadly soft. "Are you sure she needed to see that?"

            Morpheus replaced the receiver. The action seemed so surreally normal that Meira almost laughed. "I think she has seen far more than she expected. And she will see things more extraordinary than that in the coming days."

            The antique telephone rang again. The quiet Latino left his weapon on the floor and answered, not sparing a look at Meira at all. He vanished the same way Mouse had, and as Morpheus replaced the receiver, Switch turned to face Meira.

            "I don't trust you. I don't know what you are, but I don't like it. You better watch yourself." Meira was speechless. On one hand, she admired Switch's guts, to stare down two barrels and not flinch. On the other, she knew that if she didn't watch herself, she might not ever see the bullet that killed her. Switch must have seen the uneasy look on Meira's face, for she smirked as the telephone rang a third time. Switch answered, and dissolved.

            Morpheus smiled benignly at Meira and motioned her over to the chairs.


	6. Chapter 6, Explication

            Meira released a breath she didn't know she was holding and let the pistols fall to her sides. She felt suddenly weak, and extraordinarily hungry, as though she had run for miles. A thousand questions ran amok in her mind; the first to make it out of her mouth wasn't the one she meant to ask. "Are they going to want their guns back?"

            Morpheus was silent a moment. "No. There will always be more. Come, sit."

            Numbly, Meira sat in one of the chairs, set Switch's pistol on the table by the glass of water, and tucked the other one inside her jacket. She placed her hands on her knees and breathed deeply, trying to get her head around what was happening. But too much was happening, and her body wasn't cooperating. _I just need time to _think. _I need time to sort the events of the last few hours into discrete categories and analyze each in turn. _She shook her head. Even the language in her head seemed alien. _No. No, I need to sit down and cut up what happened tonight into small chunks and tackle each part separately. _That's _what I do. That's what I always do._

            "Are you all right?" Morpheus asked, preternaturally calm.

            "No. No, I can't say I'm all right."

            "I can understand that."

            "What the hell are you people? What happened to Mouse? What happened to _me?_ What have you done to me?" Each question became more desperate than the last. She struggled to keep a hold of her senses.

            "I will do my best to answer those questions, but some of them I cannot answer. We are resistance fighters. Mouse has gone back to the _Nebuchadnezzar._ I don't know what happened to you, but I might guess. And we have not done anything to you. I doubt that we could have." He leaned back in the chair and steepled his fingers, the leather of his coat creaking and rustling against the leather of the old chair.

            Anger cut through her exhaustion and disorientation. "Those are _not _answers, and you know it."

            "You're displeased with me. I can understand that. The answers are not easy, Meira. But perhaps you will know the right questions after I ask some of my own. May I?" Meira nodded curtly. "All right. You have been following us, my comrades, for some time now. Why is that?"

            "To get to the Suits," Meira replied quickly. "I've been watching them. And wherever you are, they inevitably are too."

            Morpheus nodded. "Why do you think that is?"

            "Because you are criminals, and they are . . . secret police, maybe, or soldiers. I never hear them talk about what agency they come from." Morpheus smiled for some unfathomable reason. _Was it something I said? _"I never hear them talk about anything personal at all. All they ever talk about is finding you . . . criminals, terrorists, whatever you are." Meira ran a hand up her sleeve and avoided looking at the reflective orbs in front of Morpheus' eyes. "They are there because they mean to catch you, to stop you from doing the things you do."

            "And what sorts of things do we do?" he asked, his manner relentless.

            "You . . . you steal things, sometimes. Small things. Or sometimes people."

            "People?"

            "Children. Teenagers. Sometimes they're older."

            "What would we want with children? And teenagers?"

            She raised an eyebrow. "I shudder to think of it."

            He smiled. "Have you ever seen anyone taken against their will? Do they seem to struggle? Or, if we find ourselves running away from the . . . from the Suits, do you see the children, the teenagers running _with _us? Running for their lives?"

            Meira frowned and was silent a moment. She watched Morpheus turning a slim silver case over and over in his hands. "Well, I can't say I understand it," she said finally. "And anyway, I'm watching them, not you. You people are incidental. Dangerous, sometimes violent, and always fashionably dressed, but incidental. The Suits are what I'm after."

            "Why?" Morpheus' tone was whisper-soft. There was an incomprehensible sadness in his face.

            "What?" She knitted her brows. "Well, that's my business, anyway."

            "They're dangerous. More than we are."

            "I know. I've seen you people die. They're incredible, and I've never seen such determination. Like their entire purpose in life is to track you all down and kill all of you." Meira was silent in thought for a moment, then shook her head. "That's what I'm doing. I'm trying to figure them out, why they can do things that should be impossible, and why . . . why . . ."

            Morpheus leaned forward and clasped his hands together around the silver case. "Perhaps you are trying to figure out why you are trying to figure them out."

            It took Meira a moment to decipher that. "Yes, perhaps."

            A self-satisfied smile spread over Morpheus' lips. Anger kindled in Meira at the idea that Morpheus might think he was "making progress" with her. "What ever made you interested in them to begin with? Most people would never give them a second look. They don't exactly . . . stand out in a crowd." Meira pursed her lips, willing herself to not speak. "You're not comfortable talking about it. Very well. Or perhaps you're just not comfortable with me. In any case, let me tell you a story about the Suits. We call them Agents.

            "I've only seen this once. Most of us who ever see this . . . well, it's one of the last things they see. I was making my way to an exit, much like the one on this table." He gestured with an upturned palm at the antique telephone. "It was in a public telephone booth. It was dark. I was running, and my Operator was guiding me over a cell phone, so I wasn't looking too closely. I rounded the corner and opened the door of the booth, and saw a man in there finishing a call. He hung up, and turned around, perhaps to curse at me. He opened his mouth, but then pain twisted his face; something was happening to him, something I find hard to describe now. The man's shabby jacket and torn jeans somehow changed into a well-tailored brown suit. Where his face was stubbled and he had no glasses, now he was clean shaven and had sunglasses on. Everything about him changed in an instant.

            "Most of us would have frozen in panic, or drawn a gun, or run away. Why I did none of those things, I cannot explain, but the telephone rang just then. We both reached for it -- I for the receiver, the Agent for the cord, to rip it out of the phone. They're strong, you know that. It happened so fast," Morpheus said, clearly lost in his memory. "Something happened outside the phone booth; a colleague of mine named Hagar fired her pistol into the air and shouted at me to pick up the telephone. It distracted the Agent for less than a second, but it was enough for me to take the receiver and get away. Hagar, though, she . . ."

            "She didn't make it back."

            Morpheus looked away. "No. She did not."

            The question of _back where? _bubbled through Meira's mind, but she pushed it away. "Why are you telling me this?"

            "I never thought much about the man in the phone booth since then. That is, I never thought about the man he was before the Agent . . . subverted him. I haven't thought about him until I saw how easily you dodged Switch's fire and disarmed her. I must wonder now, what happened to that man after all of us had either made it back or died?"

            "Nothing," Meira said, her own voice echoing in her ears. "After the Suit was done with him, he probably just came to. His mind made up some sort of event to explain the gap in his memory. He was drunk, or got mugged and hit on the head, anything."

            "He woke up, and believed whatever he wanted to believe." Morpheus' voice sounded distant.

            "Yeah." Half-remembered hallucinations roiled through Meira's mind. After a moment, she composed herself. "Yeah. I've seen that happen, though not in any great detail. Sometimes the Suit would be standing there among the bodies, and then he was gone, and some guy who didn't belong there at all would just be kneeling there, trying to figure out why there was blood on his hands and shell casings at his feet. Panicking. Running. Talking to himself."

            Morpheus studied her for a moment longer. "Perhaps you find it easy to identify with such a man."

            Meira stiffened. The observation, reasonable as it sounded, hit a little too close to home. "My turn," Meira said, gripping the armrests and leaning forward. "I want you to explain to me just what the hell you are. I've seen some crazy things in the last year, but tonight takes the cake. Why am I not a corpse right now, the way Switch tried to kill me? Where exactly have those three _gone?_"

            Morpheus steepled his index fingers and pressed them to his lips. He replied, "Those questions are difficult to answer. Especially the question of why you're not dead. I've only seen a few people ever move that fast, and they are all Agents."

            "I am nothing like them," she said, her teeth clenched.

            "I know you aren't. I have never seen an Agent spare one of our lives out of compassion, or perhaps fear, or simple common decency. You could have easily killed all of us. But if you did, you wouldn't be able to ask me those questions."

            "That's not the only reason." They were silent a moment. Meira continued, "You said it would be difficult to answer, but you will answer me, right?"

            He smiled. "I will try. Suppose you believe what I say and what you see. Suppose the Agents subvert and control the bodies of regular people to catch us. Several questions must arise from those assumptions. One is, did such a subversion happen to you?"

            "The other is, why doesn't it happen to you? Why doesn't a Suit just take over one of your bodies and jump off a bridge?"

            "Those are good questions."

            "Okay. So, yes, I think that the . . . subversion _did _happen to me once. A year ago." When Meira did ever think of that troubled time, she never had such a clinical word as _subversion _to describe how being robbed of her own body felt.

            "Can you tell me more?" Meira said nothing for a long moment. "I did tell you my story."

            She sighed. "Yes. There was a riot, or something. Some sort of disturbance. A car chase. Shooting. Cars crashing. And then . . . this is the part that's a little hazy. I was trying to get away from all the noise, you know? I didn't want to get caught up. And then . . . and then it felt like the whole world got pulled out from underneath me. Something . . . some oppressive, powerful thing seemed to press in on me from everywhere, crushing me, making me very small and storing me away inside my own body, making me very numb. I could see, but only as through a glass, darkly. I could feel my body moving, but it all seemed so distant, so different." Her voice sounded mechanical and far away in her own ears now. "And then I was running, shooting, but the rebel eluded me, and then I was empty. I holstered the gun and kept running. I tackled her, the rebel, and beat her, and beat her, there in the middle of the street, right in the crosswalk. I was on top of her, leaning into her face, crushing her windpipe with my forearm, and I saw my reflection in her sunglasses. But it wasn't me." Meira stopped and shook her head. She couldn't say anymore.

            Morpheus waited a few seconds. "What happened then?"

            She looked up from her hands folded meekly in her lap. "And then, after she was dead, I stood up. Or the Suit stood up in my body -- God, this is crazy. We . . . I guess it's 'we.' We stood, and we could hear a motor gunning very close. We turned our head, but it was too late by then. A car hit us. It was a rebel driving it. I could see the anger in his face. We were thrown over the hood, and . . . and then I was myself again." She took a deep breath. "I don't much like to remember that feeling, Morpheus. The oppressive _thing _left me, and I . . . I expanded back into my own body. Going from the numbness of subversion to unspeakable pain was almost . . . almost welcome. But then the pain of my injuries, they were too much, and I passed out. For the first few weeks after that, I reckoned what happened to me as hallucinations. After I recovered, I wondered why the riot, or terrorist attack, or whatever it was, didn't appear in the news. Why did no one remember what happened?

            "That's what set me on the trail of these Suits. I didn't really believe that my body had been taken over, but I thought that if they could somehow make an entire afternoon of violence somehow disappear from public memory, then I needed to find out more about them." Morpheus said nothing, but seemed to be deep in thought. "Look, I really enjoyed this heart to heart, you know? But is there anything else? I wouldn't want a Suit barging in on our little tea party."

            Morpheus tucked the silver case into an inside pocket of his coat. "No, there isn't. I was going to suggest something, but perhaps that isn't to be right now." He stood. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Meira. I would ask you if you know how to get to safety, but if you've been following the Agents for this long, I think you must have that well in hand."

            "I'll just walk," she said wearily. "It might be lunchtime by the time I get back home, but hell, I couldn't sleep tonight anyway." She stood and took the glass of water. "Mouse will be all right, then? He's a good kid."

            Morpheus smiled benevolently. "He's fine. Thank you again." He retrieved his cell phone and slid open its panel, but stopped. "There is one more thing. Someone else perhaps you can talk to."

            "I'm listening."

            "One of us will contact you in a few days."

            "Who is this other person? How will you contact me?"

            "She is the Oracle. I expect you two will have a great deal to talk about. And don't worry. We will know how to contact you." Meira didn't much like either answer. "You are welcome to take any of the guns for your walk home, if you think they might help you."

            "No. The last thing I need is a cop hassling me for something while I've got a gun in my jacket."

            "That's wise of you. Very well. In a few days." He inclined his head towards her, his arms crossed behind his back.

            Instead of replying, she drank the glass of water in a single pull, keeping her eyes locked to his pince-nez, and set it delicately on the end table. Without a word, she turned her back and left the apartment.


End file.
